Take that

If you like take-that style games, tile laying, wild treasure hunting adventure, and/or mazes, Centershaft: Fallen Elements could be a game for you, and it’s seeking funding right now on Kickstarter. Designed by George and Hattie Anthony, with art by Tyler Johnson, this game pits 2 to 4 players against one another in a rat race to find four elemental gems and leave via the hub tile. Yet this maze is dangerous, as it’s filled with dangerous natives, guardians, and is constantly being twisted and trapped by everyone involved. Featuring excellent hand-crafted illustrations, premium components, and miniatures,

“The four opportunists must venture, not fully aware of the dangers, into a subterranean labyrinth. Seeking what they believe are rare gems, they soon discover the stones contain elemental powers. Threatened, they find themselves maneuvering quickly through warp portals, battling natives, and avoiding traps in an ever-changing maze. […] Be mindful. Opponents enamored with obtaining the power of the gemstones will stop at nothing to take what you’ve got. Remember to journal each elemental landmark and track your steps wisely… the path back to the Centershaft may not be as easy to return!”

There’s a lot of familiar elements within this game that remind me of another fan-favorite, maze-crawling, take-that game – Fantasy Flight’s Wiz War. I have a lot of fond memories playing it many years ago, laying traps to stifle people, threatening the game state by picking up a treasure nobody expected, and rotating tiles to alter the maze in zany ways. Centershaft echos a lot of those things, but with a much more dynamic tile-driven grid filled with suspense and external threats that can shift and evolve in many more organic ways than Wiz War could have imagined. If you are interested in learning more about Centershaft, check out the Kickstarter campaign page for plenty of video previews, complete rules, FAQs, and updates!

“In This Belongs in a Museum, players compete to become the most revered archeologist in the world. Traverse seas and mountains, and use airports to connect dig sites to your base camp with the goal of creating the largest connected section of the board. Collect valuable artifacts for extra victory points and outwit your rival colleagues in this easy-to-learn, strategic tile-laying game.”

With a play time of around 20-30 minutes, 2-4 players will compete to explore dig sites, discover artifacts, and sabotage each other’s plans. Scheduled release is April 5, 2017.

Ah, Unicorns – majestic and elegant creatures, or at least that’s what everybody believes! Did you know that there is a Kingdom where Unicorns are stupid beings that breed like bunnies?

Toulouse-based company Morning has announced their new board game, Kill the Unicorns, a strategic family game set in a crazy universe. In Kill the Unicorns, players will play a character with special powers for the sole purpose hunting unicorns.

“Lure the Unicorns into piranha-infested lakes, or coax them into traps – with several combinations you have the opportunity to become the greatest Unicorn Hunter of all time! Kill the Unicorns is the funniest movement game you will play. Using card to move around the map or annoying others with “take that” card, and don’t forget a Pigicorn can be hidden among the unicorn herd.”

Awful Fantasy, a social media parody of fantasy and sci-fi, is coming out with its first tabletop game, Awful Fantasy: The Card Game. The game comes from the designers of Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game, and features the humor of Awful Fantasy. In this storytelling game, players will be collecting cards in order to complete their own awful fantasy tale. The game will launch on Kickstarter on May 3rd. For more information, see the full press release:

Awful Fantasy—the satirical social media source for all things awful in fantasy and sci-fi—is proud to announce the upcoming release of its first official tabletop game, Awful Fantasy: The Card Game! Watch for the upcoming Kickstarter campaign launching on May 3rd.

About the game:
Based on the the unique and absurd humor of Justin and Mitchell Lucas and with gameplay designed by Adam and Brady Sadler (Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game), Awful Fantasy: The Card Game is a casual card game for 2 – 6 aspiring awful authors. Each player takes on the role of a ridiculous author equipped with a hand of awful cards, which are used to either draw fantasy cards or thwart your rival authors.

The goal of the game is to collect a series of fantasy cards to complete your own tale of awful fantasy. Each story must contain at least 3 fantasy cards, including a plot, a protagonist, and an antagonist. The combinations of these cards are diverse, and each play provides a new opportunity for you to tell a tale more awful than your last.

The Lucas twins and Sadler twins have a long creative history that began in their high school days. This is their first collaboration in the gaming world, but hopefully far from their last.

YAY Games, the makers of last year’s hit Kickstarter Frankenstein’s Bodies, have successfully completed production of their latest project and are ready to set it loose upon the world. Debuting this week at the Essen Spiel game fair in Germany, Sandcastles is a card/tile placement game for 3-7 players, with rules variants included for 2 player or solo gaming. Each player must use the cards available to the them to build the best Sandcastle they can before the tide rolls in – but be careful: the other players will do their best to steal bits away from your sandcastle or even siphon off your bonus points!

Sandcastles plays in about 30-40 minutes and is designed by Andrew Harman. For more detail, read the full press release below:

Gamers sometimes complain about games having the same old themes (don’t mention Zombies) or that a theme has just been plastered onto a game. These are not statements that could be laid at the feet of up and coming British board game publisher YAY Games.

Following on from the cult success of Frankenstein’s Bodies, a highly thematic game about building your very own “creature” out of spare body parts, YAY are set for the international launch of Sandcastles.

“We are hoping that folks at Essen really take our latest brain child into their hearts. In Sandcastles you are on a beach trying to build the best sandcastle you can before the big wave comes crashing in.” Says Andrew Harman YAY Games chief creative.

He goes on to warn in a tongue in cheek way. “Don’t get too comfortable playing in the sand though because the other players could be planning on using crabs, seagulls of their own buckets to kick over your glorious creation and steal your sandy glory!”

Sandcastles is a very portable tile placement game for 1 to 7 players and lasts around 30 minutes. If you’re looking for a game to take on holiday to play with your family, look no further

YAY Games are getting a reputation for producing games with interesting themes that are easy to learn and pack in a lot of interaction. They can be found at booth 2E-121 at Essen.

You can also keep up to date with this fresh and exciting company on Facebook here or Twitter here.

Steve Jackson Games’ juggernaut card game Munchkin and Tim Burton’s cult classic film The Nightmare Before Christmas are two properties that need no introduction, so it’s only appropriate that the two are now coming together. The Nightmare Before Christmas Munchkin is a spookily chaotic Take That card game for 3-6 players that plays in 60-120 minutes featuring beautiful Burton-esque artwork. Have you always wanted to bribe and backstab your way through Halloweentown and prove yourself the true Pumpkin King? Then keep an eye for this one – coming soon to a Friendly Local Game Store near you!

Read the full press release below:

Fans of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Munchkin have an entirely new ghoulish world to immerse themselves in: The Nightmare Before Christmas Munchkin!

Play as a citizen from Halloween Town, Christmas Town, Thanksgiving Town or Easter Town. Battle and banish foes like Oogie Boogie, Doctor Finkelstein and Lock, Shock & Barrel from Halloween Town. Charge into battle on Santa’s Sleigh as you wield new weapons, curses and treasures.

You can play The Nightmare Before Christmas Munchkin on its own, or add it to other Munchkin games for more monster-mashing, treasure-grabbing action!

Looney Labs has an announced the newest version of their classic take that card game Fluxx. Nature Fluxx is a beautifully updated version of the previous EcoFluxx edition of the game, and will preserve all the cards and classic unpredictable gameplay of that edition, as well as continuing the EcoFluxx tradition of donating 5% of the game’s proceeds to environmental groups.

For more information, read the full press release below:

Announcing Nature Fluxx

The nature game with rules that change like the weather!

College Park, MD – August 28, 2015 In the wild, you have to adapt to survive. Grown from the seeds of EcoFluxx, Nature Fluxx is ready to take root in the game libraries of gamers all over the world. Full of rules that are constantly changing, Nature Fluxx has players constantly adapting and evolving – just like in nature!

“Nature Fluxx is a new version of our older game EcoFluxx,” stated Kristin Looney, CEO of Looney Labs. “Though it’s evolved a little, as things in nature tend to do, it still maintains all the natural elements that made EcoFluxx so special. And, just like EcoFluxx, 5% of the proceeds are donated to environmental groups.”

All the cards and gameplay of EcoFluxx have been preserved in Nature Fluxx. The card frame and package art, however, has been updated in a beautiful way. Nature Fluxx is all about adapting the rules to ensure your success. Because with Nature Fluxx, change really is the nature of the game! Nature Fluxx will be in stores on November 6, 2015.

Looney Labs was founded in 1996 by Kristin & Andrew Looney, a husband and wife team that gave up successful careers as aerospace engineers (they met while working at NASA) to pursue their hobby business full time. They could tell early on the true hit potential their card game Fluxx had, so they took the jump and quit their day jobs so they could dedicate all their energy to making and promoting Andy’s games. With the creation of new and exciting versions of Fluxx, the popularity of the game has spread worldwide and spawned numerous international publications. The Looneys believe one of the most important things they create is the fun people have while playing their games. Andy Looney continues to create Looney Labs games, from those with lighter play, like Fluxx and Just Desserts, to more strategic games like Chrononauts and the Looney Pyramid game system.

Indie Boards and Cards the company that brought us great games like The Resistance and Flash Point Fire Rescue has a new game on Kickstarter called Melee. Melee is a 20 minute war game for 2 -4 players designed by Rikki Tahta who brought us great games like Coup and Coup: Rebellion G54 with fun fantasy artwork by Xavier Gueniffey Durin.

It is the dawn of a new year. The old king has just died childless, and the new succession must be decided before the end of this year. You are a local baron or countess with as good a claim as anyone else, so now is the time to grab the throne. Your peers understand only force, and your subjects understand only gold. Gather your men, pay your knights, and assert your claim. Everyone will recognize the strongest and richest as the rightful monarch.

Each player will start with a castle, a unit of foot soldiers and some gold. The game begins with a drafting session that has players bidding on special abilities and purchase units (soldiers, knights, catapults, and camps). The game will play over four seasons (turns) and each one players will simultaneously choose one of three actions to perform: tax, build new units, or move/attack.

This game has a very unique combat mechanic. To attack you move your unit(s) into an occupied territory, then the attacker secretly palms a minimum one gold into their hand from their supply. The defender simply guesses how much gold the attack has in their hand, if they are correct they have successfully defended their territory, wrong and they have lost the battle. Regardless of winning or losing the attacker has spent their gold. While this may sound completely random gold looks to be scarce in the game and with only 5 actions over 4 rounds for the entire game there isn’t a lot of time to gain it, plus players must spend at least 1 gold per attack so this mechanic certainly has me intrigued enough to back the project.

For each season except for winter (the last season) players are allotted only one action, in winter they have two with each player taking both actions before the next player. This makes the game play very quick and can make for a brutish and short game.

Melee was originally released by La Mame Games at Essen 2014 and was a hit with a lot of folks there. It looks to be a very clever, fast, brutish, and potentially nasty game. It also looks like it will be a tremendous amount of fun. If you are a fan of this style of play you really should check this project out on Kickstarter here.

A new board game publisher from Canada, Altema Games, has launched their first game on Kickstarter. Described as a mix of the resource collection from Lords of Waterdeep with the wacky take-that of Munchkin, Cauldron, is a board game of brewing potions that promises gameplay simple enough for anyone to learn but with enough strategic depth and variety to keep you coming back for more.

Highly interactive – Ignore your opponents at your peril. To win, you must watch them, anticipate their moves and thwart their plans.

Exciting and fun – We have play-tested Cauldron for more than a year to ensure that perfect balance that makes a game, above all else, fun to play every time.

Each player must take control of a unique character attempting to earn the title of Grand Infusionist, gather (and steal) the resources necessary to complete your potions and cast spells to boost your prospects and frustrate your enemies. Cauldron was designed by Artem Safarov and plays 2-5 players in about 60-90 minutes.

Laboratory Games, publishers of the popular microgame Province, have now brought their newest game to Kickstarter. EJiPT is a fast and easy racing game where players attempt to be the first to unlock the secrets of an ancient tomb. It plays 2-4 players in about 15 minutes.

EJiPT is easy to learn and plays fast. Players begin with three ankh tokens which are used to unlock the treasure room. On your turn, you’ll roll a four sided die, you can then move up to as many spaces as the die roll. Seems easy enough, but the pharaoh’s tomb is filled with traps! Each space of the tomb causes the halls to shift and spin and will either move you one step closer to untold riches or towards defeat. Once you’ve returned your ankhs to their rightful places, you can claim the treasure within… if your opponents don’t get there first!

EJiPT has no in game language dependence! If you’ve translated the rules into another language, let us know!